“I am here today to release a plan I have for balancing the budget and cutting in the first year, $1 trillion,” Paul said. “A lot of people will say, 'Well cutting $1 trillion in one year, that sounds radical.' But you know, I operate on the assumption that the radicals have been in charge way too long.”

The “Restore America” economic plan claims to balance the budget in three years, eliminate all foreign aid and dismantle at least five federal departments -- the Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, and Interior departments. "That’s a start,” Paul said with a laugh.

“Many of those important parts of each of those departments will be held in another department ... so nobody gets laid off immediately, they get laid off through attrition, because we’re going to learn to live with a lot less government and we don’t need to keep hiring more and more people to replace those who should be retiring.”

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh seemed to endorse Paul’s economic plan and the elimination of federal departments, telling a caller who asked about the deficit, “You’re not going to believe my answer. Ron Paul has a good idea.”

“Fooling around the margins in all this spending isn’t going to get it done... Genuine big spending cuts are the only thing that is going to bring us back into some semblance,” Limbaugh said. “Nobody on our side’s ever really proposed it, and Ron Paul is going to. Everything Paul is suggesting ... he will be the first candidate to actually do so. It’ll be interesting to see how they react to this.”